Pre-intervention Survey

Thanks so much for coming by my blog to take part in this media intervention activity. Please start by clicking the link to take the survey so we can find out your current views towards homeschoolers, their parents, and homeschooling. After you finish the pre-intervention survey, please view the content below and see if your views change at all. NOTE: Please be sure to take the survey again after you finish viewing the content below 🙂 There is a link at the bottom of this blog post FYI.Continue reading Media Intervention: Debunking Homeschooling Stereotypes→

Idea and Inspiration

For this project, I decided to make a logo for this website, prodigimedia. I felt that this work would need to be representative not only of the character or theme of this site but also of my skills as a designer. The requirement for this assignment was to use Illustrator to produce a logo in vector graphics that would effectively brand this blog and represent the main topic covered herein. Continue reading Logo Design Project: Rough Draft→

Funny, but Representative

Is it wrong to make a logo funny? Not necessarily, but it depends on the character or theme of the brand you are trying to provide a mark for. In some cases, a measured amount of humor will give your logo or other design just the small edge it needs to be more recognizable and to make it stand out with customers. Incorporating some silliness may not be the right fit for every project, but in the case of this blog, I felt some humor would help quite a bit.

I’m still not totally sold on the piece of bacon in the pocket protector, as well as the marker next to it. Since I wanted to show some real world objects that represented this line of work (digital media), I may revise this sketch with a fountain pen to symbolize vector graphics. Thankfully, I’ve got a couple of days to work on it before the rough draft is due. No procrastinating!

The Creative Problem Solving Process

Sometimes, if you’re really a pretty creative person and understand a topic well, it isn’t a big deal graphically speaking to just whip something up at the last minute for a school assignment or personal blog post. Unfortunately, when students get used to the Easy Bake Oven approach to graphic design too often, they never develop a useful process for iterating their creativity. When you really need to do a good job, I believe it is important to start with some rough sketches, try to get as many workable ideas on paper as possible, then start tinkering and eliminating until you pick the best direction. Continue reading Logo Design Project: Sketches→

Why Use Vector Based Graphics?

Many new designers might wonder why they would ever want to spend the extensive amount of time and energy required to learn another image manipulation program on top of Photoshop or GIMP, such as Illustrator or Inkscape. As it turns out, applications such as Illustrator are able to create vector graphics rather than raster graphics, which are pixel-based images like digital photos that become pixelated when scaled up. Vector graphics are based on lines, curves, and other mathematically calculated shapes, so they are infinitely scalable, whether you are trying to make a billboard or a phone icon.

In this set of tutorials, I was initially going to use Inkscape, an open source alternative to Illustrator, but I decided not to since it isn’t as fully functional and would be a bigger risk of wasting a lot of time to get very little done. After finishing these tutorials, I’m glad I made that choice, as they went much quicker than my previous Photoshop tutorials did while using GIMP. In case you would like to look at the tutorials themselves, there are linked here for you: one, two, three, four, and five. Continue reading Illustrator Tutorials→

Idea and Inspiration

CHANGE OF DIRECTION

For this project, I felt it was important to highlight the kinds of excellent graphical work that can be accomplished whether as a hobby, class work, or professional project. I spent some time coming up with ideas, like doing a video collection of past work with bullet points (sort of like a PowerPoint presentation converted to video), or a graphical resume, or perhaps an infographic. However, I decided on this modality because I felt that with a tight schedule I wouldn’t be able to get as involved as I would need to with the other ideas. Plus, the instructor’s described project scope didn’t include video, and I didn’t feel like pitching it to him. Continue reading Graphic Design Project: Final Draft→

Idea and Inspiration

For this project, I felt it was important to highlight the kinds of excellent graphical work that can be accomplished whether as a hobby, class work, or professional project. I spent some time coming up with ideas, like doing a video collection of past work with bullet points (sort of like a PowerPoint presentation converted to video), or a graphical resume, or perhaps an infographic. However, I decided on this modality because I felt that with a tight schedule I wouldn’t be able to get as involved as I would need to with the other ideas. Plus, the instructor’s described project scope didn’t include video, and I didn’t feel like pitching it to him. Continue reading Graphic Design Project: Rough Draft→

Project Intent

It’s always a good idea to incorporate a creative process into your work. If you just start out making images for your design without planning, gathering resources, and problem solving, you will probably have a hard time staying focused. I always like to start by breaking down the requirements of a project to see exaclty what is required, so I will do excellent, targeted work rather than lots of wasted time going in the wrong direction.

As part of a class project, I will use the skills I gained through my tutorial work in GIMP (that’s right, I’m not using Photoshop) to complete a graphic design project that will help explain why and how I’m qualified as an expert on this topic. Based on my previous coursework in Digital Technology and Culture, I’m going to use GIMP to make a branding/promotional image in order to show what I’ve learned and what you can gain as a reader of this blog. Continue reading Graphic Design Project: Project Intent and Image Collection→

Advertisements

A Blog About Excellent Media Production in the Digital Age

Welcome to my blog. I’ve carved out this space to be a helpful destination for new creators who are looking to craft higher quality digital media content for university projects, hired work, and/or personal portfolios.